An Interview, Ten Years After Lee Sedol
by Laziness Incarnate
Summary: Ten years after AlphaGo defeats Lee Sedol, Shindou Hikaru gives his thoughts on the matter.


**An Interview, Ten Years After Lee Sedol**

**(Click.)**

Is this thing on? Are we starting?

**Yes, it's on. **

Um. Yeah, okay.

I've never done it this way before. More efficient I guess. Am I coming through clear?

**Crystal. **

Good. So…let's just jump in then?

**It's been ten years since the first version of AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol 9-dan. Do you remember what it was like, how you felt? **

Yeah. Like the world was on fire.

**Ha.**

Like the most amazing fire in the world.

**That's about how I felt too.**

Don't get me wrong, I was, it was like I was on a high at the same time.

A bunch of us were gathered at a friend's house to watch together. On the first day it wasn't like that, like no one really cared that much, but by game two we were all like going crazy all day, all night, talking about the weird moves AlphaGo was making and how Lee Sedol responded.

Some of my friends…one of them in particular, was so excited for the future of A.I.

A lot of my pro friends though…they were worried about their jobs.

**(We laugh, nervously.) **

But it's not like all the chess masters stopped being chess masters, after Deep Blue I mean.

**Did this feel bigger than Deep Blue?**

I don't know, I never paid much attention to chess. I wasn't old enough to.

**So how did it, how did go change? After AlphaGo. **

Did it?

**I'm asking you.**

Well suddenly, you know, we all had to do a lot more interviews about A.I.

**(We laugh again, less nervously this time.) **

But, I don't know, I still have a job. We go players can still eat. They still show our matches on an NHK all the time and people care. If anything go has become more popular.

**Why do you think that is? **

I think AlphaGo made go more relevant.

There are still, well, there are more classes and things out there to teach kids computational thinking and go is probably pretty computational, so maybe that's why.

There are other ways you could gain that kind of thinking, more direct ways, but go is a good way to see if somebody has…has a certain strange mindset.

It's not like all go players are good programmers and vice versa, but I think some of us are…you know, good at both.

**You famously are not into computers at all. You've said so. **

That's right.

I did terribly, in all my math courses.

And I didn't touch a computer until I was in middle school.

**But you've always, you've always expressed some interest in AlphaGo.**

Well, haven't we all?

**Mm. You said so in your last interview. It was, oh, 5 years ago. **

Yeah, we do this, about every 5 years.

**Well, you did it with my boss instead of me last time. **

I got downgraded?

**Ha, or I got upgraded. That time, you said…you said that AlphaGo is all about learning.**

Yeah.

**And I mean AlphaGo learned from us, from human games and playing humans, but AlphaGo Zero, it learned only from itself. Um. But I don't think you meant the machines. **

Yeah.

You know, what we really learned from AlphaGo, the first one, is that the way go progresses…it's, it's almost like we can't do much unless we all learn from each other. Us humans. So we become more like each other, we become more human as we play each other.

And now that…

And in the past 10 years we've learned more from machines. So we've become more like machines, I guess, but not really. We've become our better selves.

Actually, maybe we haven't only learned from machines.

**What do you mean?**

Nothing, just that.

I mean every machine has the soul of a programmer in it, or several programmers, or hundreds, thousands, over the history of programming, and all the games and knowledge of other people they've put in.

Even though AlphaGo Zero doesn't learn from human games, it's still…us. Yeah, but I don't know, maybe I'm completely wrong, but I think the human programmers, and all the go games they learned from, they're still in there, they're in the code, deep down.

**For now. **

Yeah, we're all waiting for the singularity.

**Don't you think it's frightening? The idea of machines making better machines? **

Yeah. The God in the Machine.

**And one of our new gods will surely think the earth would be better without us. **

Almost a cliché now, isn't it. The fear.

I'm not afraid of that stuff.

I don't know anything about anything, to be honest. But all I know is that humans can…we can learn a lot from unexpected sources.

**Well then, what, what have you learned? As a pro go player. As a human. **

I've learned…um.

If AlphaGo has taught me anything, it's that the way humans play is, we play to not lose. Most of us anyways.

I've become like that too.

I used to play only to, you know…

**(A long pause. A good interviewer, I remember, doesn't put words in the interviewee's mouth.) **

I played to catch something.

To catch something better and stronger than me.

**And did you ever…**

I don't know. Maybe?

But the thing is, when you see what go really is, you learn. Like a human does, you learn, together, with everyone else. And maybe you learn the wrong lessons.

AlphaGo doesn't learn those kinds of lessons. The ones born of fear.

He doesn't care how many moku he wins by.

He…

Or she?

_It_ is confident enough to…it's happy winning with just half a moku. Not happy, I mean, but that's all it needs. As long as it can be sure of the win.

But for us, we feel like we need to have a bit of a safety net. Because we don't, we don't know the future.

And neither does AlphaGo, but it's like…you know, looking at it from our wimpy human point of view, it's like AlphaGo can read the world-to-be a lot farther along than we can.

It's almost like…

Time travel, to connect now to the future. And to the past.

The ultimate connecting, without forgetting, or death.

Can you imagine…

What the kids are going to be like? Who learned from him instead of from one of us?

I think…maybe

…one of those kids will finally be able to…

will be stronger than him.

**You mean AlphaGo? **

Um.

And by stronger I don't mean they'll be able to beat him.

I just mean stronger.

**Stronger as people? **

Mm. Yeah. Maybe?

**Well, you know what they say. There's um…there's strength in us. And there's strength in the machines. But there's nothing better than a, than a human with a good machine.***

I suppose.

…That's true.

Yeah.

Oh, I think our time is up, huh?

**Yes. Thank you very much for your time. **

Thank you too.

Bye.

See you again in 5 years.

**Or my successor. **

Right. Goodbye.

**Goodbye.**

And thank you. Is this the right button to

**(end of transcript)****

* * *

**Author's notes **

* "there's nothing better than a, than a human with a good machine." – this is paraphrased from the excellent Netflix documentary _AlphaGo _(2017). title/tt6700846/

** I wrote the first draft of this fic by dictating into an app on my phone called Otter. It is a great app. I've experimented with other voice-to-text dictation platforms, like Dragon Naturally Speaking, which is expensive industry-level software—and now I use Otter, a mostly-free program, for most of my transcription needs, because the workflow just seems to be better. Also, Otter is definitely better when transcribing two or more people talking, and it is definitely easier to pick up and start using without training. For anyone new to transcription, I recommend trying out Otter before plunking down lots of money for Dragon or fancy sound equipment.

Anyone interested in AlphaGo should definitely check out the fic "Challenger" by adevyish, who actually knows how to play go and follows the news about it (unlike me). Note that "Challenger" is on a different website—google it.

(Looking at these author notes, which are all pointing at technology, I can't help but think we are all of us humans aided by good machines…well, hopefully good machines.)


End file.
